Reuters reports that North Korean state media on Friday released video from March of Kim Jong Un inspecting military drills:

UPDATE: 4/5/13 12:02 PM ET

GlobalPost correspondent: All quiet on the northern front

YANGJU, South Korea — Over the years, plenty of Koreans have explained how they feel when the North drums up the militant rhetoric. It's just a part of life, they usually say, and not as big of a deal here as it is in the American press.

Koreans don't see the blunt talk of their northern neighbor as reason to panic, even if some of them are on edge.

It's a sentiment that, among foreign correspondents here, has become popular fodder for jokes:

Did you see this coming? Fidel Castro steps into the fray, urging calm

AFP — Communist icon Fidel Castro on Friday called on North Korea and the United States to avoid confrontation and reminded both sides of their "duties" towards peace.

"If a war breaks out there, there would be a terrible slaughter of people" in both North and South Korea "with no benefit for either of them," Castro wrote in a front-page article in Granma, the Communist Party's newspaper.

North Korea has warned foreign embassies to consider evacuating their staff from Pyongyang, amid reports that it now has two missiles in place on its east coast.

Seoul has deployed two radar-equipped warships on either side of the peninsula to track any missiles fired, according to officials, and is using its ground-based radar system and early-warning aircraft to watch for tell-tale signs of a launch.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has advised several foreign embassies to consider clearing out of the capital.

Russian, British and German diplomats confirmed that the North Korean foreign ministry suggested they "examine the question of evacuating employees." The countries said they were evaluating the situation, but had no immediate plans to move staff.

GlobalPost correspondent Geoffrey Cain sends this update from his location near the DMZ:

"I'm now in Yangju, a rural town a 30 minute's drive south of the demilitarized zone near the North Korea border. All is calm here, even though some locals are a little on edge.

'Those crazy sons of b*****s. [Communist] bastards,' says Yoon Jeong-hyun, a busboy at a pork barbecue restaurant. 'But what can we do about them? We deal with these threats every year or so. They're still [communists].'"

Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor of Rimjin-gang, a magazine featuring news from reporters inside North Korea, said Thursday that he recently spoke to a female civil-servant in Ryanggang province, northern North Korea, who said soldiers who have been stationed in underground military tunnels to be “combat-ready” have begun returning to their barracks, starting Monday.

“I’ve also heard that the ‘Jangmadang’ private markets in the region, which have been severely restricted in past months, have now returned to normal operations,” Mr. Ishimaru said, explaining that such easing also coincides with the coming of April, when farmers and civilian militia alike need to get on with spring planting.

On the other side of this game of chicken, Pentagon officials told CNN that they were concerned that American announcements of recent military deployments may have contributed to escalating tensions with the North.

"We accused the North Koreans of amping things up, now we are worried we did the same thing," one Defense Department official told CNN. Speaking anonymously, the official said, "we are trying to turn the volume down" on US rhetoric concerning North Korea.

"We are absolutely trying to ratchet back the rhetoric," said the official. "We become part of the cycle. We allowed that to happen."

NBC News looked at the likely scenarios if the situation on the Korean Peninsula gets out of control.

They made some educated guesses based on declassified US and UN assessments and the analysis from military scholars:

Because of the North Korean army's considerable size (fourth largest at 1.1 million members, according to intelligence assessments), North Korea would likely begin an attack with a massive ground assault.

South Korea, though it has a smaller army, is equipped with more modern weaponry, and the North would have to bypass around 28,000 US troops stationed along the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries before reaching the South.

GlobalPost's senior foreign affairs columnist Nick Burns, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a former US diplomat, shares five thoughts on "how we might understand the politics and future trajectory of the latest crisis involving North Korea."

South Korean media are reporting that Korean and US intelligence satellites have spotted North Korea moving what appears to be medium-range ballistic missiles to its east coast. Meanwhile, the regime said on Thursday that it has the "final approval" to launch "merciless" military assaults against the US, including the use of nuclear weapons.

But a missile attack isn't as likely as you'd think, despite the war rhetoric.

Analysts here in Seoul seem to agree that, if the press reports are true, the pariah state is probably prepping a test of the medium-range BM-25 Musudan missile. The device could, in theory, reach US bases in Japan and Guam.

It doesn't take an expert to know North Korea isn't a haven for freedom and open economy, but just how bad would it be? So bad that the latest economic freedoms index by The Heritage Foundation put North Korea dead last with a total score of only 1.5.

It's also one thing to come in last, but North Korea really came in last: there's a 27 point difference between the Hermit Kingdom and the second-to-last Cuba. No other candidates in the list of 177 ranked countries have such a wide point margin.

According to Google Trends, interest in the search term "North Korea" climbed higher in April than at any other point in the last decade. A LexisNexis search of newspapers showed a 49-percent increase in articles on the isolated country.

"On the surface, Kim is using the same playbook as his late father: Scare the Western world with the threat of nuclear destruction in exchange for a desired outcome. But in his execution, Kim has broken new ground with a calculated slow-drip formula that involves issuing a unique threat each day of the week," writes Hudson.

So are we all just being played by Lil' Kim? Will he run out of threats to issue?

Uriminzokkiri's main site was offline Thursday morning, while its Twitter feed, Flickr stream and a number of companion websites had their content replaced with anti-North Korea messages.

Notably, the hackers posted a cartoon wanted poster of Kim Jong Un – "aka Nuke Nuke Mickey Lover" – with a list of his alleged crimes, including "threatening world peace with ICBMs and nuclear weapons," "wasting money while his people starve to death," and "concentration camps and the worst human rights violation in the world."

North Korea's supreme leader was drawn as a pig, with a huge tattoo of Mickey Mouse. Other images showed the Anonymous hacker collective's iconic Guy Fawkes mask covering the North Korean flag.

The move is being interpreted as the latest in a string of provocations by Pyongyang.

The Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed South Korean official who said they were "closely monitoring whether the North moved it with a view to actual launch or just as a show of force against the US."

North Korea on Thursday morning local time issued another threat against US, saying that that its military has been cleared to wage an attack on the US using "smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear" weapons.

Deutsche Welle cited a statement by North Korea's official KCNA news agency on Thursday as saying the general staff of the Korea People's Army had "ratified" a nuclear attack on the US.

"We've seen today's statement by North Korea, again making unhelpful and unconstructive threats. It is yet another offering in a long line of provocative statements that only serve to further isolate North Korea from the rest of the international community and undermine its goal of economic development. North Korea should stop its provocative threats and instead concentrate on abiding by its international obligations."

The US announced shortly before North Korea's statement that it is moving an advanced missile defense system to Guam, in the Pacific, in the next several weeks — two years ahead of schedule.

Japan's Asahi newspaper, meanwhile, reported that a US intelligence satellite spotted what appeared to be a long-range KN-08 missile being transported on a train in North Korea to the Sea of Japan coast.

The missile being moved was said to be a Musudan-type medium range missile.

The Musudan, also known as the BM-25, is a medium-range ground-launched missile that could be fitted with a nuclear warhead, although analysts doubt the North could do that.